First, the beautiful.

Twelve years old and knowing nothing about anything. I’m sitting on a boardwalk by a beach in northern France, the girl I’ve fallen hopelessly and achingly in love with sitting beside me, her head resting on my shoulder. We’re watching the sun go down and wishing we could stop time, because when nine o’clock comes we have to go back to our respective hotels and sleep before our separate journeys home the next day.

I want to say something romantic but I’m twelve years old and I know nothing about anything. Before I can stop myself I’ve said the first thing that comes into my head, and even before the words are out of my mouth I realise how deeply I’ve put my foot in it. I tell her I think I’d like to marry her someday.

She freezes for a moment and I daren’t look at her. I stop breathing for what seems like an hour until she puts her hand on mine and tells me she thinks she’d like that too.

We kiss and it’s like velvet lightning; a choir of angels singing in the cooling twilight, the heavens opening and showering us with stars. It’s a moment that I’ll remember every time I close my eyes and whenever I think I feel happy. Every moment in my life to come, I’ll compare to this; and the comparison will forever be deeply, terribly unfair, as nothing will ever come close.

Eventually we head back inside and say goodbye, not knowing what might happen next and what we might just have started. Even if we’d caught a glimpse of the years to come and the time we’d spend together, I don’t think we could have been happier or more excited for the future. There was no map guiding us to buried treasure; we’d simply found it ourselves and now dreamed only of enjoying these new riches together.

Then, the horrible.

Seven years later, I’m woken early on a Sunday morning by a phone call from her friend. At first there are no words to hear, just a weeping and gasping that barely sounds human. When the words finally come I learn that she’s dead, hit by a car, and though there are more words after this they stop making any kind of sense and just become noise. I put the phone down and try to understand but my mind can’t grasp it; the thought of a world without her makes no sense, and I wonder when I will wake up. It never happens, and as the hours and days pass I feel half of me slowly die and turn to dust. It is weeks before I can cry for her and years before I can talk to anyone about the pain.

Seventeen years later now, and there’s still a scar across my heart in the shape of her face. Still I dream about what might have been and what I lost, no matter how much I know it wounds me to do so. But no-one ever says you get what you want or what you feel you might deserve.

Source: FamishedHeart

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True or not, this is one of the best pieces of writing I have ever read. Short, powerful, and emotionally compelling. From happiness and indescribable joy to sadness and unexpected loss.

(Does anyone else feel like this plot could become an incredible book or movie?)